New study quantifies human cost of War on Terror in Af-Pak

The human cost of the War on Terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been devastating, a new research points out.

Since the beginning of the War on Terror in 2001, the overall, combined death toll in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been estimated at 173,000 with 183,000 severely injured, the study under the Costs of War project states.

Afghanistan

The study finds that one million Afghans are internally displaced, while 2.6 million Afghans reside as refugees in more than 70 countries.

The report in an estimate said that only during January to April 2016, 117,976 people fled their homes from 24 out of 34 Afghan provinces.

Since October 2001, around 31,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in direct violence.

Moreover, traumatic amputations have been rampant in the country, with above 2,600 such cases estimated to have been helped by the Red Cross and Handicap International.

The toll of suffering on aid workers and humanitarians provided a harrowing picture, with 377 deaths since 2001.

Pakistan

The military operation Zarb-i-Azb that commenced in 2014 approximately displaced internally around one million people from Pakistan's North Waziristan, although most of the IDPs were able to return home by June 2015, the report said.

The study presents a dire state of civilian casualties, stating that almost 22,100 civilians died while 40,792 were injured as a result of the war.

The study puts the number of militants and Taliban deaths at around 31,000.

The military and Pakistani security forces personnel deaths were said to be 8,214.

The most astounding revelation in the study, which is based at Brown University?s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, maintains that violence is not plummeting.

The research focuses on the pattern of violence and killings in the Af-Pak conflict zone and primarily took into consideration the trend in the recent years.

The intensity of bloodshed showed variations over time, however, the report found a raise in violence in the first half of 2016 in Pakistan.

Neta C. Crawford, author of the study and professor of political science at Boston University said that the hike in the intensity of war-related violence in Afghanistan ?could have a ?spillover ?effect in Pakistan.?

The research points out that the Afghan government control only 70 percent of the country. Six percent of Afghanistan is directly controlled by the Taliban and 23 percent of the territory is contested.

The research is a part of the updates of the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, launched under Brown University in 2011. The team carrying out the research and analysing data consists of human rights practitioners, physicians, legal experts and scholars.